Share:

Recently we showed you what happened when very old, yellowing varnish was removed from a 17th century painting. In just a few seconds a drab, discolored portrait was transformed into a vibrant work of art, unveiling the piece as the artist originally meant for us to see it. It was like watching a magic trick, only instead of an illusionist, it was a highly skilled art restoration expert using the power of science. But like any good act it’s a trick worth seeing again and again, and fortunately for us the man who brought us the first one has a some more for us to enjoy, including a new one where a face is conjured up from nowhere, and another where the payoff was almost half a billion dollars.

It was art dealer Philip Mould who brought us the first example of varnish removal, and recently he shared more examples of restoration work. He also offered some insights into the kind of lost information it can produce.

A Jacobean beau begins to buck his mask of grime.Discoloured resin not only optically reduces tones but modelling also; its professional removal will sometimes heighten the chance of identification and attribution. pic.twitter.com/1cyqSRg1fi

In this next one he explains how the varnish goes from being a protective cover for the work to becoming a yellow tomb for its real beauty.

What the mysterious 400 year old Prince Henry looked like before (with cleaning tests) and after cleaning. Mastic varnish – which is made from tree resin – biodegrades and turns yellow brown over time, and can almost completely hide a painting if left long enough. pic.twitter.com/taLUuy5cO4

But while removing the varnish reveals the painting’s true color, there’s another technique that reveals something much harder to see. Look at this painting from 1759.

X-ray drama! A surface anomaly in the belly area of this important portrait of Admiral Anson (1759) by Sir Joshua Reynolds took us to the radiography department of Chelsea and Westminster hospital. See next tweet for what we discovered…… pic.twitter.com/Kc6LWKS4lk

Getting an X-ray result like that is very different for a painting than from your doctor. (If you’re like us and find all of this work fascinating, check out his Twitter feed where he answered some questions about why it’s unlikely that abandoned painting was a self-portrait.)

Here’s another.

Recently discovered: when a threatening would-be queen is executed, her royal image is often buried alive with her.Left: Adrian Vanson’s portrait of John, Lord Maitland of Thirlestane (1589); right: X-ray view of the same painting, showing the late Mary Queen of Scots beneath. pic.twitter.com/DLWl6mCHV5

So what about that whole “half a billion dollars” trick? Recently a painting by Leonardo da Vinci was sold for a world record price of over 450 million dollars. For years no one even realized it had been painted by da Vinci, because a bad restoration added paint and obscured the identity of the master who had created it.

So what was the value of the painting before it was restored?

It’s authenticity disguised by poor restoration and added paint, you could have bought this painting in 1958 for £45. https://t.co/O8jxGzS5Mn

How the $450 million Leonardo looked looked last century when you could have bought it for £45! Crude repaint by a later hand (left) to cover damage ended up hiding Leonardo’s hair and face. A restorer took months with solvent, scalpel and then paint brush to revive it(right). pic.twitter.com/KaGkVUrcDw